The Legitimacy Problem of Political Behaviours

Abstract

Organizational behaviour discipline constantly emphasizes how important concepts such as trust, justice and commitment are for healthy organizational structures. In addition to this, some concepts that pose some important risks in practice, such as political behaviour are approached with caution. Because political behaviour in organizations, such as self-awareness, eye-opening, hypocritical behaviour, compromising behaviour, sanctions, abuse of power, snitching, skipping the chain of command, flatterycan harm corporate culture and functioning. Legitimizing such undesirable behaviours within the organizationcan lead to negativitiesthat increase in frequency over time, which are difficult to compensate for.